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_ duction had increased more than 50 per cen’ ae the real wage Page Four THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1927 THE D AILY WORKER AF THE AMERIC AN pean ATION OF LABOR CONVENTION Published by by ie DAILY Ww ORKER PUBLISHING co. Daily, Except Sunday ¥.. Address: Phone, Orchard 1680 33 First Street, New York, Cabi ‘Daiwork” ~ SUBSCRIPTION RATES _ By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New York): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per years $3.50 six months $2.50 three months $2.00 three months ddress and mail and make ont THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, Net ee | ii: Sovsenepan, .- WILLIAM F. DUNNE § BERT MILLER Entered as secon | — . at | Mr “Hello $ Exhibit at Piidlersh Andrew W. Mellon, head of the aluminum trust, billionaire holder of shares in the biggest monopolistic concerns in the w orld, boss of the national republican political machine, real head of the present Washington administration, occupant of the office of secretary of the treasury in violation of the law of the United States, had an exhibit of his own on display at the Founder’s Day celebration of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. That exhibit was Calvin Coolidge, president of the United States. It was no accident that Coolidge was selected to deliver a speech at this trivial annual celebration that is usually limited to the local lights of Pittsburgh and later grew to be the dominant power in the state, now holds undisputed sway at the national capitol. In order to maintain control of the state machine the Mellon crew had to enter into an alliance with the notorious Bill Vare aggregation of Philadelphia hooligans and political high- binders, in their election debauching campaigns. The senatorial investigations of the Pennsylvania primaries of last year hit the Mellon-Vare combination particularly hard. Because of the expose of the million-dollar slush funds there is danger of the state machine losing important offices in the off-| year elections to be held next month. As a measure toward| offsetting the election scandals and to aid in the campaign, Boss | Mellon brought Coolidge to Pittsburgh to grovel publicly before the blood-streaked masters of iron and steel and alumirium. In| the most servile manner Coolidge perverted the history of the) industrial development of the country, eulogized Andrew Saad -and declared that the men of great wealth in the United States were public benefactors who shared with the “common people” by donating to education, art and religion. His speech was an admission that the institutions of education and art are pros- tituted and religion ustd by the exploiters of labor who support them, but instead of condemning this condition Coolidge approved | it. All his talk about the matchless progress of the Pittsburgh | region was a cloak for the real motive of his speech, which was| to praise his political mentor, Andrew W. Mellon, and Mellon’s| brother. “The exhibition this year has been made possible through the gen- erosity of two of your distinguished citizens, Andrew W. Mellon and | Richard B. Mellon. They stand out as men who are devoting them- | selves to the service of humanity, one by remaining as a leader in great financial and industrial enterprises and the other by turning his great talents to the administration of the public finance as secretary of the treasury of the United States.” Naturally, Coolidge neglected to’mention the fact that Mellon employs his office not merely to defend the interests of his class, | but to benefit himself personally to the extent of millions of dollars by the enforcement of his tax revision program and that) the whole republican administration came to his aid in prevent- ing criminal proceedings being taken against Mellon because of | the illegal operation of his aluminum trust. The entire speech was designed for purely local consumption | and in order to aid the Mellon machine in the coming state elec-| tions. Again repeating the familiar Coolidge banalities about labor | sharing in the general prosperity in order to maintain the illu- | sion of republican prosperity, the president became almost] dithyrambic in his eulogy of American wave-slavery as “a mighty symphony.” The bleak and blazing hillsides and river-banks of the Pitts-| burg region may seem a vast symphony to the exploiters of labor, the bankers ‘and the politicians, but to the workers whom they hold in subjection through control of the political power of the state-_the army, the state cossacks, the police, the courts, the| jailers, the executioners—all this is more harrowing than the tortures of the lowest cycles of Dante’s inferno. The mass of workers in the Pittsburgh region whose blistered and broken bodies are distilled into profits can hardly be expected to appre- ciate the Mellon-Coolidge poetry. While praising the Mellons, Coolidge also indulged in the most extravagant eulogy of the class for which he speaks by declaring that: “Men of large resources in our country more and more devote themselves to the service and welfare of the people.” This is nothing more nor less than the dirty sermonizing of a political flunkey who tries to persuade the slaves that their masters exist only in order that they may be benefited thereby, in face of all the history of the world that points unerringly to the conclusion that never, at any time, under any conditions have} the slave masters ever endeavored to achieve the liberation of their slaves. The reply to the class speech of Coolidge should be intensifi- cation of the movement in Pennsylvania and elsewhere for a class party of labor that will challenge the cynical power of the Mellon outfit. “Labor Economists” Contradict Each Other When the labor agents of capitalism at the head of the Amer- ican Federation of Labor enter the realm of economics they be-|~— come bewildered and contradict themselves from day to day. The official policy in relation to wage increases is proclaimed to be based upon ascertaining by facts and figures whether a given in- dustry is able to stand an increase, and, if so, precisely how great the increase can be. That policy is, of course, one more weapon in the arsenal of class collaboration. It is effective as a means of preventing action while the “experts” conduct their surveys to determine whether the workers are entitled to living wages. But in contradiction to-this theory and completely discredit- ing the whole policy of the so-called Workers’ Education Bureau, and its director, Spencer Miller, Jr., was the address of John P. Frey who, while trying to defend the official policy on wages, in reality presented arguments that completely discredit it. Frey at least had his statistics approximately correct on the increase in productivity in this country. He showed that since 1899 pro- | tive” {circulation of 1500. | under way, Fra Sie Mr. Green: “To Hell with this working class stuff!” Se Special Problems Face Karelian Comrades By WILLIAM F. KRUSE. (Special DAILY WORKER Correspondence) (Continued from Last Issue.) Party Organization and Press. The Party organization consists of |3200 members, of which 700 are in the capital. In 1922 there were only that many in all Karelia. The “na- part of the Party includes 28 per cent Karelians and 3 per cent Finns, this is less than their absolute proportion of the total population, but since their number is growing more rapidly than that of the Rus- |sians this condition will soon be over- | come. There are two newspapers, a Russian daily with a circulation of 4000 and a Finnish tri-weekly with a Both are called “Red Karelia.” The Party organiza- tion is headed by an Oblast Committee which in turn is under the direction} of the North-west Bureau of the Cen- tral Committee of the CPSU. Aside from the national problem, the Party here has to contend with |peculiar objective conditions, one of |the most difficult of which is the lack of good transport facilities. Aside from the single Murmansk rail- |road and the extensive but uncon- | nected and unimproved waterways, there is virtually no way of getting about, This was a terrible strategic handicap in the struggles against the Finnish Whites in 1923. Now there is an extensive road-building program one-sixteenth of the total budget being devoted to this item. Many of the forest trails are so bad that in summer the only means of transport other than horseback is the| |old Indian method of tying two sap- ling poles to the horse’s back and let- ting them trail on behind, the freight being fastened across the space be- tween the poles. Several good roads have already been built and the intro- duction of mechanized intensive lum- bering methods will give a big im- petus to better land transport. Two new railroads are also projected, both radiating from Soroka, the big saw- mill center, one of them to run down the east shore of Lake Onega, there- by offering an alternate route to Moscow. that avoids Leningrad alto- gether. This is still a job for the future, the immediate task is~ to build roads suitable for auto-truck transport and this is being done. Work in the Village. The Party meets these difficulties | with special measures. Its agit-prop work in the villages is of two types, called respectively “stationary” and (literally) “perambulating.” The first } involves the sending of a professional “propagandist” to live in the village, where he usually is engaged in technical work for the Soviet while running the reading hut and doing other educational work. A somewhat higher type of worker is required for the Sper eae | Gites He ; covers a whole county and gives 2 or |3 nights a week for a month or six weeks to each village, helping exist- ing nuclei, reading huts, ete. and lorganizing new ones, preparing and !smoothing the way for “stationary” workers.. There were 10 such per- ambulating units in action this sum- mer and the number will be increased. Of reading huts there are 60, of “Red tion between the two is that the for- mer have trained full-time propa- pend on casual-local talent. work are trained in the SovPartShkol —Sehool for Soviet and Party Wotk- jers. a limited number of soviet employes }are admitted. The course lasts two admitted to the school, half Russian and-half Karelian. ‘Teaching is in two languages, the student attending in the one in which he is most pro- ficient. Only publie school education and Grade | “Polit-grammar” is re- quired as entrance qualification, and the subjects taught include Political Economy, Labor History, Soviet and Party structure and method, mathe- matics, and village practise. The first step on graduatien is usually to take charge of a reading hut in the village or else some phase of social work in a workers’ club in the town. Each student is allowed 20 roubles per month, for which he gets food, room, laundry, movie tickets, ete; and one- fourth of the students are eligible for an additional allowance of 20 roubles per month as a dependency allowance. An excellent type of worker is attracted to these cburses and they seem to be conducted with fine success. ‘Both of the comrades at the head of the school speak good English, one, Comrade Lassy, having spent some time in England after taking a Ph.D. degree in Helsingfors University, and the other, Comrade Yakula, having been a well-known figure in’ radical Finnish circles around Duluth prior to the I.W.W. split in the Finnish Federation in 1914. Use Movies Extensively. | One of the best means of agitation and propaganda in the Karelian vil- lages has proven to be the motion pic- ture. The Party Agit-Prop Depart- /ment has six movie units on the road all the time. stacles has been a lack of qualified operators. This was overcome by running a special training course on} motion picture work for which cer-| \tain party forces’ were commandered. | The courses are to be continued. Very few villages have access to electric current so a special dynamo which can be turned by hand must be carried along to generate current for |the projector lamps. The greatest ‘interest is shown in the new Sovict- of the workers, (that is the actual amount the workers can pur- chase with the money received as wages) had inereased but five per cent. Certainly, in view of this fact, wages can increase consider- ably without even approaching the relative wage that was realized by the working class of this country nearly thirty years ago. While the policy of the American Federation of Labor does not agree with the facts in the.c Ca ing out their treacherous ase it will not prevent the fakers role and trying to conceal their perfidy under an avalanche of statistics.compiled by. mental pros- titutes who are paid to distort facts to conform to the interests of the employers. Corners” 250. The principal distinc- ; gandists in charge while the latter de- | The forces for this propagandist! Only workers and peasants and | | t | | One of its chief ob-|} made films, foreign pictures are sel- dom of a sort to be understandable or liked by the village audiences. This form of political cultural. work is to be extended in view of its proven superiority over all other methods of spreading Communist enlightenment. These are of course only two of the special conditions to be coped with by the Party organization—the difficulties of language and distance —but they serve to show the pliability of Russian Party methods to meet all requirements. Space forbids going into ‘further detail but it is hoped that these few “Letters from Soviet Karelia” have served to show our American readers how the work of Socialis# construction is going on even in the Artie Circle. LECKERT By H. LEIKERT (Translated from the Yid\’ \ Fh) By A. G. Magil. NOTE:—uirsn Leckert, a Lithu- anian Jewish cobbler who one of the heroes of the Russian workingclass. While a member of the once revolutionary “Bund,” he played a leading part in the efforts to overthrow the Czarist despotism in Lithuania. On May 6th, 1902, Leckert was arrested and thrown into jail. | Tyo moon’s face tonight is big and Despite tortures and threats, mingled with promises of clemency, he refused to divulge the names of his com- rades, and on June 10th the heroic cobbler was- hung on an open field on the outskirts of Vilna. His execu- tion stirred class-conscious workers throughout Russia, and many years later, with the establishment of the workers’ and peasants’ government, Leckert was officially recognized as a proletarian martyr. Memorials have been built in his honor, streets named after him in the U.S. S. R., and the 25th anniversary of his death was observed throughout So- viet Russia and in other parts of the world. * * * H. Leivick, one of the foremost Yiddish poets and dramatists, is the author of “Rags,” “Shop,” “The Golem,” and other plays and poems which have given him’ an interna- tional reputation. As a young man in Russia Leivick helped carry ‘on the traditions of Hirsh Leckert in the “Bund,” and in 1906 was arrested for revolutionary activity. He served six years at hard labor in various czarist dungeons, and was then sentenced to Siberia for life, but escaped to the United States in 1913. cently completed a new play, “Hirsh could | years, and each year 60 students are neither read nor write, has become | Leivick re-| | 1 i Leckert,” based on the life of this | workingclass martyr. He is a fre- quent contributor to the “Freiheit,” Yiddish Communist daily, and “The Hammer,” Yiddish Communist monthly. I am indebted to the author for a number of helpful suggestions and for permission to publish this and other translations of his work.—A. BM yes * * x red, Under my oars the boat bends in the tide; All day I’ve thought of Leckert who is dead, And so the moon is rounder, greater- eyed. Years like clambering walls rise out of the past, They loop a muteness round my throat tight drawn; All day I’ve thought of Leckert’s hands that cast The gallows on themselves in the haggard dawn. And thus I sang to myself all the long day: “O I know not when, but I know that there will break Out of silence an hour that will come to each and say: Take for yourself a dawn like Lee- kert’s—take. . . Sway, my oars, drift wherever you choose; Hot winds hurry the night to me as ig grope; Again, again I sing to the sacred noose, And to my neck that quivers for the rope. Letters From Our Readers One Job: Twenty-three Boys Needed It. Editor, The DAILY WORKER:— I am 17 years old and have been out of work for several months. Last Monday I got up at 6 o’clock in the morning and bought a paper to see if there were any jobs open. I looked | in the “Boys Wanted” column and saw that a boy was wanted “to make himself useful in a clothing factory.” I went there as fast as I could. One boy was waiting when I ar- rived and the place wasn’t open yet. I talked to him and he said he had been out of work for eight months. While we were waiting more boys came. At last the place opened’ and all of us ran up the stairs to apply for the job. The man in the office said the boss would not be in until 8.30 o’clock, so we waited some more, More and more boys kept coming un- Trade unionists who are confronted with the “new wage pol-|til there were 23. Twenty-three boys iey” of the A. I. of L., demands, will do well to use the figures higetagen as a means toward defeating their wage Nae for one job! y against |). said crowded into th to them, “ As soon as the boss was ready, the : a boy Saturday.” All of us went |away very discouraged, —William Narotsky, Cleveland. * » Only Real Labor Paper. Editor, The DAILY WORKER:— On June dist I asked you to stop sending me the DAILY WORKER while I was.on a four months camp- ing trip. Well, I am back now, so please send me the paper at once. I believe The DAILY WORKER is the only real labor paper. —A. W. Barton, Harlan, Iowa. Invent “Flying Antenna.” OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine, Oct., 14. — The trans-Atlantic plane “The Dawn” is using a new thing in radio antenna construction today. It is known as “the flying anten- na.” In case of a forced landing, with the regular. antenna submerged, a kite to hil is. is HE great love entertained for the late Samuel Gompers by his sur- vivors in the official family of the | A. F, of L. is demonstrated by the | amount of the collection for the Gom- pers’ Memorial Fund. Since the in- auguration of the fund on December 20, 1924, until August 31; 1927, the enormous sum of $98.50 has been garnered by his faithful followers. At this rate there should be enough mon- ey raised by the end of this century to build an ivory tower in honor of Sam’s memory about the size of a five cent cigar. It isinteresting to note that the A. F. of L, collected $1,606.06 for the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Building Fund in just two years. * * wee AS a terpsichorean of international repute King Alfonso of Spain is accustomed to shaky movements but the latest political upheaval in his kingdom is no Charleston. Tho the decapitating sword has often been halted perilously near the ‘royal jugu- lar, there is reason to believe that the present threat against the Alfonso- Rivera regime is one of the most serious that ever faced this pair. Al- fonso is personally blamed for the Morocean fiasco, but revolutionists who know their economic onions pre- fer to believe that Alfonso and de Rivera are the tools of certain finan- ciers rather than that the ill-fated attempt to build up an empire in North Africa was conceived by the royal sheik in order to enhance his prestige with the wives of ambassa- dors to Spain and particularly to ren- der his attentions more persona grata to the daughters of American sausage manufacturers, subway con- tractors: and bootleggers who might spurn Mr: Alfonso’s: “Can I have the next dance?” unless they were as- - sured that the request came from the head of an empire and not from the vhief of a tottering kingdom. * * * ILL. ROGERS, one of America’s favorite clowns, is betting with William Randolph Hearst that Cool- idge will run again, Arthur Bris- bane who was originally challenged is more tight-fisted than his superior officer in the yellow-press syndicate. Arthur dodged the gamble. Hearst bases his opinion that Coolidge will not run again on the ground of Cal- vin’s patriotism, his personal honor and the hostility of the American peo- ple to a third term, Hearst’s good man, Brisbane, used much time and newspaper space trying to convince the populace that Coolidge is now serving his first term in office. Evi- dently he did not succeed in convert- ing Hearst. Rogers, the clown, fav- ors the re-election of Coolidge on the ground that the country and his par- ty need him. - * * « AO clown, more famous than Rogers, is boosting Benito Musso- lini. The clown is none other than the socialist, George Bernard Shaw. Shaw, once a thorn in the side of the British ruling classes, is now one of the chief human ornaments in the empire. The shafts of his satire that once pricked the anatomy of the Bri- tish ruling class are now directed against the revolutionary elements and the man who praises Mussolini for establishing the dictatorship of the minority by a policy of murder and assassination denounces the men who set up a government of the work- ers and peasants in Russia for the benefit of the majority. Pre-war Shaw is no more like post-war Shaw than pre-war Scotch is like the post-war brand. «* 8 (OHN H. WALKER, president of the Illinois Federation of Labor, is a disappointed man. John. of the eI ping eye lashes, appeared at the Los Angeles convention with lance in rest against the Communists, pacifists and other evil-doers. It was time to put these pesky critics of Wall Street in their place and the lachrimal prodigy of Springfield was to become a 20th century Jack The Giant Killer. Like the mythological buffoon who essayed | | i to make the sickly king’s daughter / | laugh at the risk of losing his h in the event of failure, John took/ a chance ‘on being laughed out of the convention unless his efforts mét with the approval of th® monarch¢ of the AF. of L. powwow. Heré’s what happened. } * * * 2 Whi introduced a resolution assaile ing pacifists, charging them with being in the pay of Wall Street. It happened that Matthew Woll had just endorsed a resolution denouncing them for not being in the | pay of Wall Street, and for carrying on in such a manner that, if their activities were not halted, Wall Street would not have a dime to give anybody. Here was a man who wanted to make it a misdemeanor to ‘accept money from Wall Street. This would never do. So John was figuratively taken over the convention’s knée and spanked on the seat of his political intelligence. La- hor fakers may be devoid of political | morality but it does not necessarily fotiow that they ave devoid of sense. Now, everyhody is laughing at big- hearted John, the ero shad all the requisite qualities, fo except Beene: i ly \ fh